They have attacked our God...
By destroying the holy Eucharist, they have destroyed the body and
blood of Jesus. What else is left in the church now? If they had asked
for it, I would have sacrificed my life readily.” Babu G., a
local resident and worshipper at St James Church, Mariannanapalya,
Bengaluru, is traumatised. Babu is surrounded by several others. Apart
from the open safe, there is nothing to immediately suggest that the
church had been vandalised a day earlier, on Sunday, September 21,
2008. Officially, the vandalisation of St James Church has been recorded
as a case of theft. Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa and Bengaluru Police
Commissioner Shankar Bidari said this incident was unconnected to
other attacks taking place on churches across Karnataka.

Sister
Annie, who works at the church, disagrees. “Nothing was stolen.
The sacred bowl was missing initially but we found it when we were
cleaning things up. I kept arguing with the police commissioner, but
he insisted that this was the work of professional thieves. Thieves
apparently who wouldn’t wait for the collections generated from
the Sunday mass,” she says.

The difference
between Annie’s perception and that of the police commissioner
is at the heart of the communal conflict that is spreading in Karnataka.
Between August and September, attacks on churches and Christians have
been reported from different parts of the state — in Davangere,
Udupi, Mangalore, Chikmagalur, Shimoga, Tiptur, Kolar, Chikballapur,
Kodagu, and Bengaluru. Officials estimate that 55 attacks have occurred
in the last two months — close to an attack a day. The rise
in the number of attacks has coincided with the coming to power of
a BJP government, which is ideologically aligned with the RSS. Radical
groups like the Bajrang Dal, who have claimed responsibility for the
attacks on Christians, are also aligned with the RSS.

The 2001
Census pegged the percentage of Hindus in Karnataka at 83.86, and
Christians at 1.91. In Orissa, where a similar campaign against Christians
is on, the 2001 Census showed nearly 95 percent Hindus and 2.44 percent
Christians. The BJP heads the government in Karnataka and is part
of the government in Orissa. Analysts say that the campaign against
Christians is an attempt to consolidate the rightwing hold in Karnataka.

For instance, Home Minister VS Acharya was the only Jana Sangh member
of the Udupi Municipal Council in 1968. Today, he heads the crucial
home ministry. In a sense, this is payback time for the BJP, which
has built its success on the foundations of painstaking RSS work for
over 40 years in Karnataka. Therefore, Yeddyurappa’s refusal
to criticise the Bajrang Dal from the time the attacks began two months
ago.

Thus emboldened,
the Bajrang Dal is going all out. In a much publicised press conference
in Mangalore, on September 14, Mahendra Kumar, the Karnataka president
of the Bajrang Dal said that his organisation had been carrying out
attacks on Christian prayer halls across Karnataka as ‘a last
attempt’ to stop forceful conversions. On the same day, 14 churches
across three districts, Mangalore, Dakshina Kannada and Chikmagalur,
were attacked for allegedly carrying out conversions by coercion.

Kumar said
the attacks would continue as long as Christians carried on with “conversion
activity.” He also warned others from supporting the Christian
community. “Christians should not feel hurt by the attacks.
If they do, we will conclude that they support the kind of institutions
that have been involved in conversion of Hindus to Christianity. Then,
we will be left with no option but to take action.” Kumar said
Bajrang Dal’s actions should be seen as “warnings for
people to mend their ways” and that his organisation was acting
on the basis of complaints they had received from Hindus in different
places.

Yeddyurappa
says the attacks are “aconspiracy against his government.”
By the time Kumar was arrested around midnight on September 19, the
Bajrang Dal had five days during which churches were attacked in Kolar,
Chikmagalur, Belthangady, Manchenahalli and other places. The Central
Government, headed by the Congress-led UPA, sent two delegations,
one of the National Commission for Minorities and one from the National
Commission for Women, to have its own understanding of the situation.

That the Congress is so distanced from the events in Karnataka is
a measure of how the RSS changed things in the state. For instance,
Chikmagalur, where some attacks have taken place, had voted for Indira
Gandhi in 1978 when the rest of the nation was strongly against Indira
Gandhi after the Emergency. Today, Chikmagalur has a strong BJP presence.

So, do
the attacks signify that Karnataka is an Orissa, when it comes to
the way Christians are attacked? Teesta Setalvad, editor of Communalism
Combat, had pegged Karnataka as a communal hotspot way back in 2003.
“The next Orissa or next Gujarat is a moot point, but the communalisation
process in Karnataka is many years old. From 2003, we have seen ugly
scenes of communal violence in the state targeting Muslims and Christians.
The attacks on Christians fall very much into the core ideology of
the Sangh — that of creating different levels of prejudice in
the minds of the Hindus. With the BJP coming to power, there are greater
possibilities in terms of political space that the Sangh can now capture.”

Part of
this process is the BJP campaign on the Baba Budangiri, a Sufi shrine
that the BJP says is actually the Dattatreya Swami peetha. The BJP
mobilises people in thousands every year at the site, making it a
high pitch issue for the rightwing bloc.

Also, several
ministers, including the chief minister, the home minister, the law
and parliamentary affairs minister, the transport minister, and the
rural development and panchayati raj minister, are known to have strong
RSS backgrounds. Key officials function on the directions of the Sangh
Parivar organisations like the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
In Davangere, following the attacks on August 17, the district administration
issued notices seeking a survey of churches functioning without permission.

THE SURVEY,
significantly, did not include other places of worship. In Shimoga,
a showcause notice was issued on August 29, from the Deputy Director’s
office of the Public Instruction Department to Sacred Heart High School
and Mary Immaculate High School. The notice mentions that the deputy
director was acting on behalf of a representation received from the
Bajrang Dal against the schools on account of their closure on August
29. On that day, the two schools, along with over 2,000 schools and
educational institutions across Karnataka, had closed down in protest
against the attacks on Christians in Orissa — a day of silent
protest observed by Christian institutions across the country.

Says Dr
Geneieve, Secretary of the Karnataka Regional Commission for Education,
“We were well within our rights to declare a holiday on August
29. We don’t need prior permission from the state government.
Chapter IV (19) of the Karnataka Educational Manual states that ‘the
discretion is reserved to the competent authority to grant leave…
in the interest of the institution. The showcause notice is hence
unwarranted.” Unmindful of the rule book, across Karnataka,
on the instructions issued by the Primary and Secondary School Minister,
Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri (another RSS loyalist) showcause notices
were issued to all Christian schools and colleges.

Rajeev
Gowda, professor of Economics and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute
of Management, Bengaluru (IIM-B), and also a Karnataka Pradesh Congress
Committee member, believes that the issuing of showcause notices to
respected institutions on the basis of complaints received by ‘fringe
elements’ proved to be the turning point. “Despite the
huge outcry, despite knowing that the rulebook said something else,
the fact that the government took action on the basis of their complaints
was perhaps an important indicator. They thought that the government
was indeed entirely on their side,” says Gowda. “It was
however a miscalculated venture if the political embarrassment is
anything to go by.”

ANOTHER
SPACE occupied by the Sangh Parivar with the BJP government in place
is that of law enforcement. Since the BJP came to power, over a thousand
police officials have been transferred – a move seen as unprecedented.
Says a top police official, recently transferred to Bengaluru, on
the condition that he wouldn’t be named, “Apart from the
large numbers, what is most surprising is that even inspectors and
sub-inspectors have been transferred. As far as I know, 416 police
inspectors and 171 sub-inspectors have been transferred.”

Within
two months of Yeddyurappa taking charge, 90 IAS officers and 52 IPS
officers were transferred. Though Yeddyurappa defended the transfers
as a way to find the right job for the right man, not everybody was
convinced. The coastal belt, Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Mangalore, the
seat of communal violence against Christians now (and Muslims earlier)
has seen the maximum number of transfers.

The transfers,
says Professor Ravivarma Kumar, Senior Advocate at the Karnataka High
Court, are “an attempt to grant political immunity to the Sangh
forces by ensuring that cases are not booked in case of violence.”
Kumar has copies of a communication from the office of the Principal
Secretary to the Government, in August 2007, asking that cases be
dropped against 51 Bajrang Dal activists in Haveri, Shimoga, Belgaum,
Gadag, Bijapur, Bagalokote, Mandya, Kodagu, Dharwad, Uttara and Dakshin
Kannad districts.

At that
time, the BJP was a partner in the government headed by the Janata
Dal (Secular) with Yeddyurappa as the deputy chief minister. Among
those let off was ex-MLA of Surathkal constituency, Kumble Sundara
Rao. In November 2003, Rao’s provocative speech delivered at
Thokkutu had led to communal clashes in the area.

Central
to the attacks that took place over the last two months was the allegation
that the Christian community was forcibly converting Hindus into their
fold. At times, it was argued that money sourced from abroad was offered
as an inducement to convert. Yeddyurappa also said to the attacks
are “a reaction to the hostile climate created by conversions
into the Christian fold.” Vinay Shetty, the Bajrang Dal Mangalore
unit president, claimed that the missionaries were converting hundreds
and thousands of Hindus into Christianity.

The Archbishop
of Bengaluru, Reverend Dr Bernard Moras, who publicly told Yeddyurappa
that he was deeply upset, offered another perspective on the conversion
debate. “The Christian community has been running schools and
educational institutions for hundreds of years. Have we converted
all those who arrive at our doorsteps seeking education and medical
attention? Why are so many people flocking to our schools and colleges?”

Said KL
Ashok, Secretary of the Karnataka Communal Harmony Forum, “The
conversion debate and all questions of forceful conversion are unsustainable
arguments. The Constitution gives everyone the right to practice,
profess and propagate religion. Besides, why doesn’t the law
of the land apply? Why not register police complaints against those
who do indulge in ‘forceful’ conversions? They have no
evidence, nothing to hold against the Christian community.”

THE AGENDA
of communalisation apart, a more visible indicator of the communal
cauldron that the state has become since the BJP came to power has
been the clampdown on people condemning the violence. Following an
increase in the attacks on the Christians, there have been several
protests in different parts of the state — Mandya, Shimoga,
Bengaluru, Davangere, Mangalore, etc., condemning the violence and
demanding action against the accused.

In retaliation,
the government booked 16 cases against the Karnataka Forum for Dignity,
a statewide Muslim organisation, for pasting posters referring to
Pastor Martin Niemoller’s World War II poem, ‘First they
came...’ Yeddyurappa claimed that the posters, attempting to
drive a connection between the Sangh Parivar attacks on Muslims and
Christians and other minorities, were “provocative and were
trying to destroy the harmony in society.” The cases filed against
the Forum were for promoting enmity between different groups on grounds
of religion, race, place of birth, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance
of harmony.

What was
the response to the cases? A meeting for communal harmony in Davangere
was inaugurated with a reading of the same poem that was banned. Just
one attempt to reclaim the secular space in Karnataka.